Python Regex: re.match(), re.search(), re.

findall() with Example

What is Regular Expression?

A regular expression in a programming language is a special text string used for

describing a search pattern. It is extremely useful for extracting information from text
such as code, files, log, spreadsheets or even documents.

While using the regular expression the first thing is to recognize is that everything is
essentially a character, and we are writing patterns to match a specific sequence of
characters also referred as string. Ascii or latin letters are those that are on your
keyboards and Unicode is used to match the foreign text. It includes digits and
punctuation and all special characters like $#@!%, etc.

For instance, a regular expression could tell a program to search for specific text from
the string and then to print out the result accordingly. Expression can include

 Text matching
 Repetition
 Branching
 Pattern-composition etc.

In Python, a regular expression is denoted as RE (REs, regexes or regex pattern) are

imported through re module. Python supports regular expression through libraries. In
Python regular expression supports various things like Modifiers, Identifiers, and White
space characters.

Identifiers Modifiers White space Escape

characters required

\d= any number (a digit) \d represents a \n = new line . + * ? []

digit.Ex: \d{1,5} it will $ ^ () {} |
declare digit between \
1,5 like 424,444,545
etc.

\D= anything but a number + = matches 1 or \s= space

(a non-digit) more

\s = space ? = matches 0 or 1 \t =tab

(tab,space,newline etc.)
\S= anything but a space * = 0 or more \e = escape

\w = letters ( Match $ match end of a \r = carriage

alphanumeric character, string return
including "_")

\W =anything but letters ( ^ match start of a \f= form feed

Matches a non- string
alphanumeric character
excluding "_")

. = anything but letters | matches either or x/y -----------------

(periods)

\b = any character except [] = range or ----------------

for new line "variance"

\. {x} = this amount of -----------------

preceding code

Regular Expression Syntax

RE

import re

 "re" module included with Python primarily used for string searching and
manipulation
 Also used frequently for web page "Scraping" (extract large amount of data from
websites)

We will begin the expression tutorial with this simple exercise by using the expressions
(w+) and (^).

Example of w+ and ^ Expression

 "^": This expression matches the start of a string

 "w+": This expression matches the alphanumeric character in the string
Here we will see an example of how we can use w+ and ^ expression in our code. We
cover re.findall function later in this tutorial but for a while we simply focus on \w+ and \^
expression.

For example, for our string "guru99, education is fun" if we execute the code with w+
and^, it will give the output "guru99".

import re
xx = "we believe,education is fun"
r1 = re.findall(r"^\w+",xx)
print(r1)

Remember, if you remove +sign from the w+, the output will change, and it will only give
the first character of the first letter, i.e., [g]

Example of \s expression in re.split function

 "s": This expression is used for creating a space in the string

To understand how this regular expression works in Python, we begin with a simple
example of a split function. In the example, we have split each word using the "re.split"
function and at the same time we have used expression \s that allows to parse each
word in the string separately.

When you execute this code it will give you the output ['we', 'are', 'splitting', 'the',
'words'].

Now, let see what happens if you remove "\" from s. There is no 's' alphabet in the
output, this is because we have removed '\' from the string, and it evaluates "s" as a
regular character and thus split the words wherever it finds "s" in the string.
Similarly, there are series of other regular expressions in Python that you can use in
various ways in Python like \d,\D,$,\.,\b, etc.

Here is the complete code

import re
xx = "we believe,education is fun"
r1 = re.findall(r"^\w+", xx)
print((re.split(r'\s','we are splitting the words')))
print((re.split(r's','split the words')))

Next, we will going to see the types of methods that are used with regular expressions.

Using regular expression methods

The "re" package provides several methods to actually perform queries on an input
string. The method we going to see are

 re.match()
 re.search()
 re.findall()

Note: Based on the regular expressions, Python offers two different primitive operations.
The match method checks for a match only at the beginning of the string while search
checks for a match anywhere in the string.

Using re.match()

The match function is used to match the RE pattern to string with optional flags. In this
method, the expression "w+" and "\W" will match the words starting with letter 'g' and
thereafter, anything which is not started with 'g' is not identified. To check match for
each element in the list or string, we run the forloop.

Finding Pattern in Text (re.search())

A regular expression is commonly used to search for a pattern in a text. This method
takes a regular expression pattern and a string and searches for that pattern with the
string.

In order to use search() function, you need to import re first and then execute the code.
The search() function takes the "pattern" and "text" to scan from our main string and
returns a match object when the pattern is found or else not match if the pattern is not
found.

For example here we look for two literal strings "Software testing" "guru99", in a text
string "Software Testing is fun". For "software testing" we found the match hence it
returns the output as "found a match", while for word "guru99" we could not found in
string hence it returns the output as "No match".

Using re.findall for text

Re.findall() module is used when you want to iterate over the lines of the file, it will
return a list of all the matches in a single step. For example, here we have a list of e-
mail addresses, and we want all the e-mail addresses to be fetched out from the list, we
use the re.findall method. It will find all the e-mail addresses from the list.

Here is the complete code

import re

list = ["guru99 get", "guru99 give", "guru Selenium"]

for element in list:
z = re.match("(g\w+)\W(g\w+)", element)
if z:
print((z.groups()))

patterns = ['software testing', 'guru99']

text = 'software testing is fun?'
for pattern in patterns:
print('Looking for "%s" in "%s" ->' % (pattern, text), end=' ')
if re.search(pattern, text):
print('found a match!')
else:
print('no match')
abc = '[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]'
emails = re.findall(r'[\w\.-]+@[\w\.-]+', abc)
for email in emails:
print(email)
Python Flags

Many Python Regex Methods and Regex functions take an optional argument called
Flags. This flags can modify the meaning of the given Regex pattern. To understand
these we will see one or two example of these Flags.

Various flags used in Python includes

Syntax for Regex Flags What does this flag do

[re.M] Make begin/end consider each line

[re.I] It ignores case

[re.S] Make [ . ]

[re.U] Make { \w,\W,\b,\B} follows Unicode rules

[re.L] Make {\w,\W,\b,\B} follow locale

[re.X] Allow comment in Regex

Example of re.M or Multiline Flags

In multiline the pattern character [^] match the first character of the string and the
beginning of each line (following immediately after the each newline). While expression
small "w" is used to mark the space with characters. When you run the code the first
variable "k1" only prints out the character 'g' for word guru99, while when you add
multiline flag, it fetches out first characters of all the elements in the string.

Here is the code

import re
xx = """guru99
careerguru99
selenium"""
k1 = re.findall(r"^\w", xx)
k2 = re.findall(r"^\w", xx, re.MULTILINE)
print(k1)
print(k2)

 We declared the variable xx for string " guru99…. careerguru99….selenium"

 Run the code without using flags multiline, it gives the output only 'g' from the
lines
 Run the code with flag "multiline", when you print 'k2' it gives the output as 'g', 'c'
and 's'
 So, the difference we can see after and before adding multi-lines in above
example.

Likewise, you can also use other Python flags like re.U (Unicode), re.L (Follow locale),
re.X (Allow Comment), etc.

Python 2 Example

Above codes are Python 3 examples, If you want to run in Python 2 please consider
following code.

# Example of w+ and ^ Expression

import re
xx = "guru99,education is fun"
r1 = re.findall(r"^\w+",xx)
print r1

# Example of \s expression in re.split function

import re
xx = "guru99,education is fun"
r1 = re.findall(r"^\w+", xx)
print (re.split(r'\s','we are splitting the words'))
print (re.split(r's','split the words'))

# Using re.findall for text

import re

list = ["guru99 get", "guru99 give", "guru Selenium"]

for element in list:
z = re.match("(g\w+)\W(g\w+)", element)
if z:
print(z.groups())

patterns = ['software testing', 'guru99']

text = 'software testing is fun?'
for pattern in patterns:
print 'Looking for "%s" in "%s" ->' % (pattern, text),
if re.search(pattern, text):
print 'found a match!'
else:
print 'no match'
abc = '[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]'
emails = re.findall(r'[\w\.-]+@[\w\.-]+', abc)
for email in emails:
print email

# Example of re.M or Multiline Flags

import re
xx = """guru99
careerguru99
selenium"""
k1 = re.findall(r"^\w", xx)
k2 = re.findall(r"^\w", xx, re.MULTILINE)
print k1
print k2

Summary

A regular expression in a programming language is a special text string used for

describing a search pattern. It includes digits and punctuation and all special characters
like $#@!%, etc. Expression can include literal

 Text matching
 Repetition
 Branching
 Pattern-composition etc.

In Python, a regular expression is denoted as RE (REs, regexes or regex pattern) are

embedded through re module.

 "re" module included with Python primarily used for string searching and
manipulation
 Also used frequently for webpage "Scraping" (extract large amount of data from
websites)
 Regular Expression Methods include re.match(),re.search()& re.findall()
 Python Flags Many Python Regex Methods and Regex functions take an optional
argument called Flags
 This flags can modify the meaning of the given Regex pattern
 Various Python flags used in Regex Methods are re.M, re.I, re.S, etc.